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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Still figuring it out

We had my daughter midway during a two-year research hiatus from my residency. Our daughter is now five and just started kindergarten.

Because my husband and I both had flexible schedules for her first year of life, the two of us split our time with her for that first year. We then put her in a Montessori school when she was one year. We have been fortunate with this because she thrived and continues to thrive in that environment.

My husband gets most of the credit. He is the one who continues to take our daughter to school/camp/activity most mornings while I am already at work at some early hour. He is also there when I am on call or have an emergency in the hospital.

The other important thing that has made our lives easier has been his income, which even while I was in training made it so that we could afford her childcare. In addition to school expenses, we have also needed to have someone pick her up at the end of the school day (typically 4:30 pm) and care for her until one of us gets home (typically 6pm). We have achieved (in our minds) “equilibrium” with our daughter.

Fast-forward to now. I am at home on maternity leave with our 4-week old son. We are thrilled to have him – as we waited until I finished surgical residency training and fellowship and started practicing last year.

But as we have known for some time and now experiencing personally these past few months – the childcare process, particularly with infants, can be overwhelming. So far, our solution this time is a “patch-work” approach with the help of our parents who are not nearby. After the first 6 months, there is still more to figure out.

Yes, my husband’s work offers 6 weeks of paid paternity leave, and he is going to take it.

I guess the lesson is that you have to be adaptable. And that resources and support help. But the process can be scary. Maybe looking at our oldest and seeing how things have worked for her has reassured us (perhaps falsely) that things will simply “work out” if we are diligent. We certainly hope that that is the case for this one.

Figuring it out is what you'll be doing till they're grown. Generally arrangements change and shift according to the child and the situation. My kids are grown now but it's so depressing to read these posts and realize how little things have changed. I'd hoped the next generation would have had things easier.

Somehow it does always work out. I'm not sure if it really works out or if whatever is going to happen just happens, and we adapt. Probably the latter. But the bottom line is that this will probably be another one of those situations where we look back years from now and can't believe how important these blips of time in our kids' lives once seemed.

Mothers in Medicine is a group blog by physician-mothers, writing about the unique challenges and joys of tending to two distinct patient populations, both of whom can be quite demanding. We are on call every. single. day.

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